Return of the Crimson Guard (41 page)

Ullen smiled, relieved to see his commander in a lightened mood. Yet he could not keep his gaze from returning to the glistening dark face of their High Mage. She sat where she always had, at centre deck, where she'd first positioned herself, and, thinking on it, Ullen could not call to mind a single time when she could not be found there. She even took her meals there, and slept sitting up, her fan shimmering and hissing through the night like a giant insect. He had
to admit to being impressed – she reminded him of their old powerful cadre mages, A'Karonys or Nightchill.

Her eyes rose then, capturing his – huge brown pools, and she smiled as if guessing his thoughts. ‘They don't know you have me,’ she said, or seemed to say; he could not be sure. ‘They think this will be a contest of hedge-wizards and wax-witches. But I am of the old school, friend Ullen. I was taken in by Kellanved – and expelled by Tayschrenn. And for that I will teach him regret.’

The fan seemed to snap then with a slash that Ullen could almost feel above the storm driving them on. He glanced to Urko but the commander seemed oblivious to the exchange.
Keep her in check
–Urko had expressed every confidence he could keep the woman in check. Yet even now she hinted at larger ambitions and her own motives, playing her games undeterred by, or contemptuous of, his presence. What sort of a viper had they taken into their midst – a viper even too traitorous and unreliable for the emperor and his kind?

All the while the fan hummed, almost invisible, shimmering, and Ullen wondered, was it this ally of a priest of a sea cult helping them along, or were they all merely at the mercy of a flickering fan?

* * *

From the profound dark of a tunnel opening off the Pit, Ho sat watching the slightly lesser dark of the shadowed half of the large circular mine-head. He started, jerking, as yet again his chin touched his chest and he glared about wondering what he'd missed. But all remained quiet. Everyone seemed asleep, including, for all he knew, the two newcomers; the spies he'd last seen entering those shadows and now sat waiting just as he was. Waiting for what? Some sign among the stars? The right moment for a midnight escape attempt? Ho tried to identify their figures amidst the monochrome dark, but failed. No movement. He chided himself; maybe they just couldn't sleep in the caves; maybe they simply longed for a touch of the slight breeze that sometimes made its way down here when conditions were just right. Yeah, and maybe they were worshippers of the cult of Elder Dark.

Something then – movement? Someone standing there in the dark? The pale oval of a face upturned? Ho leaned forward, straining. A call sounded, an owl's warning call. From his friends? Or above? Hard to say. A flash in the moonlight streaming down into the open mine-head. Something small falling. His friends stepped out into the
light; one, Grief, stooped, picked up the thing, examined it. They talked but Ho couldn't hear any of it.

As they retreated into the shadows Ho could not contain himself any longer. He marched out to confront them. Damn them and their schemes! Don't they know everyone here lives only at the sufferance of their captors above? That the slightest provocation could mean shortened rations, perhaps death for the more sickly among them?

When he reached them they were waiting for him, the object, whatever it was, nowhere in evidence. He glared. The one who gave his name as Grief eyed him back, unperturbed. ‘You're up late, Ho.’

‘Cut it out. What're you two up to?’

Grief sighed, glanced to Treat who shrugged. ‘Nothing that concerns you.’

‘You're wrong there, brother. Everything to do with this place concerns me. We're all one big family down here.’

‘Somehow I knew you were going to say that. Listen, if it'll help any, what we're up to is no threat at all. In fact, it could prove just the opposite.’

‘And I'm supposed to trust you on that, am I?’

Grief lifted his arms in a helpless shrug. ‘I guess that's about the meat of it.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘Yeah. I know. So, what now? Gonna denounce us to your ruling committee?’

Ho decided that now would be as good a time as any to test his estimate of the character of these two strangers. He raised his chin to indicate the surface. ‘Maybe I'll have to let the guards know – what do you think of that?’

The two men went still. For an instant Ho feared he'd overplayed his hand; that his reading of these two was wrong – after all, they truly did seem to be all alone right now. A body found in the morning, who would be the wiser? A big risk; but then, what kind of a test would it be otherwise? Grief crossed his arms. ‘No, I think we aren't going to do anything at all, because if you really were going to tell them the last thing you would do is let us know.’

Damn him. ‘OK. So I'm not about to run to the Malazans. But I need to know what you two are doing. What you're up to.’

Grief slowly edged his head from side to side; he seemed genuinely regretful. ‘Sorry, old man. We can't say a thing – yet. But what I can ask is: where is our faithful watchdog right now? One of your happy family members, I believe. Sessin. Where's he? Maybe he decided it convenient to leave you alone with us, eh, Ho?’

Ho had more to say but the two walked off leaving him fuming with unspent words. In the shadows his sandalled feet stepped on something and he knelt, feeling about. He came up with the shredded remains of a piece of driftwood.

* * *

Walking the plains surrounding Li Heng was a dangerous undertaking now with the Seti riding at will. Worse so, since Silk was headed the wrong direction: that is, away from the city. The young Seti of the various soldier societies, the Wolf, Dog, Ferret and Jackal, were happy to chivvy any refugees or fleeing traders
into
the city. But for anyone to attempt to leave was another matter altogether. The arrow-tufted bodies of those who tried to run south to Itko Kan lands, or downriver to Cawn, were left to rot within sight of the city walls as object lessons to all.

Silk kept to the lowest-lying of the prairie draws and sunken creekbeds as he headed west, parallel, more or less, with the Idryn. His goal was visible ahead as the source of the thick smoke of green wood and the stink of unwashed bodies and unburied excrement. A refugee camp of the most wretched and sick, those turned away from the city gates and judged too abject to be a worthy of a lancing or an arrow from the Seti warriors.

Faces turned to watch him pass as he walked the rutted trampled mud of the camp. Old men and women sat in the entrances of tents of hide. Children squatted in the mud peering up at him with open mouths. They did not even have the energy to beg. He stopped before one child whom he thought to be ten or so. ‘I'm looking for some Elders, child. Two or three who are always together. Heard of them?’

The child merely stared with liquid brown eyes; she was so dark he suspected mixed Dal Honese blood. One arm hung twisted and stick-thin, some old injury or illness. Sudden compassion for the child caught the breath in Silk's chest. He allowed himself the gesture of touselling her hair despite the crawling vermin. A woman ran up, snatched the child's good hand. ‘What do you want? Go away! If the Seti see us talking with you they'll cut our throats!’

‘I'm looking—’

‘You're looking for the Hooded One, that's what you're doing!’ She dragged the child off. Lurching behind the woman the child glanced back; smiling shyly she raised her crippled arm to point to the river. Silk answered with a sign of the Blessing of the Protectress.

He found the three of them sitting in a line along the muddy shore of the Idryn, fishing. ‘Catch anything?’

None moved. ‘Same as what you're gonna catch,’ said one.

‘Which is …’ said the second.

‘Nothing,’ finished the third.

Sighing, Silk peered about and spotted a young willow with a passable amount of shade. He crouched on his haunches beneath, took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his face. This was
not
going to be easy. ‘We're going to defend the city—’

‘Wrong. What you're …’

‘Gonna do …’

‘Is lose.’

Silk forced open the fist he'd closed on his handkerchief, pushed it back into his shirt pocket. ‘Look. All that was a long time ago, OK? I'm sorry. We did what we thought was right at the time.’

‘You …’

‘Talkin’ …’

To us?’

Old simmering grudges flared within Silk. ‘Hood take you! She would've lost anyway! There was no way Kellanved would've kept his word! They wiped out all the other local cults! Or made them their own. The same thing would've happened here.’

‘Sounds like …’

‘You're askin’ us …’

‘To trust you?’

Silk stared at their hunched backs. Their bloody stiff backs, all of them. ‘Liss is with me. Together we're going to give it everything we have. This is our best chance in the last century. You know that. Even you can sense it.’ Their heads edged side to side as they shared glances.

‘Been that long?’

‘A damned century?’

‘And I haven't caught a damned fish yet?’

Silk straightened and pushed his way out from under the willow. ‘You know where I'll be. The way's open to you now should you choose. With or without you we're going all the way with this.’ When Silk looked up from straightening his shirt and vest he saw that he'd been speaking to no one; the three were gone, sticks and all.
Smartarses.

At noon of that same day Hurl sat uncomfortably on her horse as part of the official Hengan emissary to delegates of the Seti tribal
high council, or ‘Urpan-Yelgan’, as it was known. She, Sunny and Liss constituted the representatives of High Fist Storo. Or, as the Hengan Magistrates insisted: ‘Provisional military commander of Li Heng, and Interim governor of the central provinces.’ Or, as Storo described himself, ‘everyone's favourite arrow-butt’.

For her part, Hurl thought it far beyond her duty simply to be mounted on a horse. To her mind if there was anything more evil than Jhags on the face of the earth, it was horses. She rode hers with one hand on the reins and the other on her knife – just in case. The day before a rider had approached under a white flag to request a meet. Storo had out and out refused. ‘I've got nothing to say to them,’ he'd complained. Hurl had been stupid enough to say, ‘Someone has to go.’ So, sure enough, she had to go.

Thankfully, the city magistrates thought it beneath their dignity to meet. As Magistrate Ehrlann put it, ‘I wouldn't know whom to address: them, their horses or their dogs..’

Now, Hurl sat uncomfortable and suspicious on her evil horse next to Sunny on his mount amid a veritable host of the malevolent beasts in the form of the 17th Mounted Hengan Horse. Mounted Horse? What a doubly iniquitous conceit!

The meet would take place on the summit of a hillock within sight of the city walls. Ahead, in the distance, lances tufted with white jackal fur could just be made out marking the spot. As they drew close Hurl motioned for the cavalry captain to hold back; she, Sunny and Liss would go on alone. Hurl kneed her mount onward – forward fiend! It cooperated, content perhaps for the moment to lull her suspicions. Sweat ran down from her helmet though the day was cool. A helmet! She couldn't remember the last time she actually wore a damned helmet. Sunny and Liss moved to flank her as the ‘official’ representative. Three mounted figures became visible climbing the opposite gentle slope, three men, two obvious shamans in their furred regalia, long tufted lances, headdresses and full draping fur cloaks. The lead man was harder to place; a soldier, that much was obvious, and foreign, non-Seti. He wore a plain ringed leather hauberk over a quilted undershirt, a battered blackened helmet under one arm. Dominating his figure though, stood the length of a Seti double recurve bow jutting up from a saddle sheath yet reaching fully as tall as he. His grey hair was brush-cut and barely visible over a balding scalp tanned nut-brown. A grey goatee framed a thin mouth that drew down his long face. He nodded to Hurl, who responded in kind.

‘Whom am I addressing?’ he asked in unaccented Hengan.

‘Hurl, representative of Fist Storo Matash, military commander of Li Heng.’